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Robert McCall, Apotheosis of Technology, 1970, oil on canvas, private collection
Time to wrap up the occult obelisk. This was supposed to be two parts, but the second one wound up going deeper into the meaning between ancient and modern times. So we made the whole thing a three-parter
Part one looked at the origins of the obelisk in the ancient world and how it evolved as it left Egypt for Rome.
Part two looked at how this got taken up and repackaged up with a bunch of other ancient ideas in the Renaissance.
This one will see how the incoherent garble of symbols attached to the obelisk carries into modern times. It runs a bit long, but we didn't want to have to add another post.
Two important ideas that have come up that are relevant to occult symbols.
1. The Life of Symbols. Signs of any kind pick up different connotations and shades of meaning over time - just through real-world use. Times change, words stay the same, so when you read a sentence in an old book, the details that come to mind reflect your world, not the author's. Read something as simple as "store" and you each picture different types of shopping experiences. You can study the past and get an idea of what a store would have been like in Shakespeare's time, but the sights, sounds, smells - the instinctive mental picture of going shopping - is modern. But at the same time, the general meaning - a public place where goods are purchased - stays the same. If the story involves a dispute with a merchant, we can relate to the personal dynamics perfectly well. Differences in detail don't prevent us from grasping the general meaning. Symbols are like this.
Sun Temple of the 5th Dynasty Pharaoh Nuserra, 2445 - 2421 BC,
The obelisk got its general meanings in ancient Egypt well over 4000 years ago. Scarcity of records from that far back makes it impossible to recreate much in the way of detail, but the shape picks up associations with the creative, life-giving energies of the sun and the gods. The pyramid and tapered shaft represent the primordeal site where the gods created the world and a ray of the sunlight that manifests that power in our world.
This is the best preserved of the 5th Dynasty sun temples. They generally features a squat obelisk on top of a tapering pyramidal structure.
Shape and symbolism point out a connection between heaven and earth - solar and divine. This leads to placement in front of temples and royal tombs. Places where heaven and earth meet.
It was believed Egyptian pharaohs became gods, so there is huge overlap between temples and royal tombs in their minds. The 5th Dynasty pharaohs were buried in their sun temples. Eventually, pharaoh's tombs become temples.
Rome adopted the general symbolism of the obelisk to their own society and added another general meaning - power and cultural supremacy. By conquering Egypt and moving the imposing obelisks, they sent the message that the ancient center of civilization had moved. This came with a lot of Egyptian religious "mysteries" filtered through the weird Hellenistic mix of philosophy, religion, and occultism that flourished in Ptolemaic Egypt. The general meanings of the obelisk hung around, but picked up new specifics from this new environment.
Obelisk of Montecitorio, erected by Psametik II in Heliopolis, 594-589 BCE, moved to Campus Martius by Augustus, 10 BC
Ara Pacis Augustae, or Altar of Augustan Peace, 9 BC, Campus Martius, Rome
The Ara Pacis was erected by the first Roman emperor Augustus as a symbol of peace and prosperity under his divine rule. The obelisk was put up a year before it was unveiled. Today the obelisk in in a busy square and the altar in a museum, making it hard to see the relationship.
It was aligned with the obelisk to create an horologium or sundial where the shadow would fall on the altar on certain dates. It was assumed that it would strike the center on Augustus' birthday, but computer modelling shows this wasn't the case. When it did strike was on the festival of the Temple of Palatine Apollo. The temple that Augustus built beside his home to his patron deity. The obelisk was also dedicated to Apollo.
Apollo was the Roman sun god and often associated with imperial rule. The obelisk was an Egyptian symbol of solar and divine power, so this is an easy adaptation. Connecting this through a symbolic solar calendar to a monument to the blessed rulership of a divine emperor shows how general meanings fit new specifics.
James Stuart, Pyramidion of the Montecitorio Obelisk from De Obelisco Caesaris Augusti, Bandini 1750, plate III
Stuart was an English architect associated with the early Greek Revival, but also spent time in Rome. He was involved in the excavation of the Obelisk of Montecitorio in 1748, and published it a nice volume two years later. We should not be surprised to see the solar disc at the peak and enthroned gods of the sun and rebirth - what looks like a Ra-Horekty and Osiris. Only here it means a divine Roman devotee to Apollo.
Changing the specifics against a general set of meanings brings us to the second main point:
2. The Spray of Symbols. This central feature of occult "thought" goes back to Roman times at least. The idea is that all this occult knowledge - all knowledge in general for some - points to some deeper, secret, hidden truth that is never explained, but is really important. True meaning of the universe important. Different groups have different angles, but they all share a commitment to secrecy. Schools of magic and philosophy, mystery cults, alchemy, Kabbalah and the rest all keep the inner workings hidden and initiate members gradually. Over time "seekers" keep respinning the same sources, increasing the overlap between symbols and movements. This makes it hard to draw hard lines between say Hermeticism, late Neoplatonism, and the cult of Isis. They aren't the same, but the symbolism overlaps.
This hokum came back with the Renaissance interest in ancient learning. Optimistic but gullible - they saw the past as a path to Truth, but couldn't assess historical source material.
So an already jumbled occult mess got taken up by ideologues from a totally different culture, mixed with their own ideas, and this time, they've really got it! It's why they all use the same symbols and sages - there's nothing else there. An endless hall of charlatans reflecting charlatans with no check on the imagination. No empirical testing, no scriptural authority, just different spins on the desire to be your own god.
Alchemic coniunctio, plate III in Stephan Michelspacher's Cabala, Spiegel der Kunst und Natur in Alchymia, 1615.
Engraving by a Paracelsian alchemist - Paracelsus was another Renaissance occultist who sprayed the hermetic symbolism in his own way. In other words, an occult spin on an occult spin.
This shows the "alchemical conjunction with the seven planets" over a mountain with a phoenix - classical astrology and a modified Egyptian symbol associated with resurrection.
The constellations aren't in natural order but paired to depict opposing elements coming together. Mercury is at the top - combining Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus, Classical Mercury, and the alchemical importance of the element of the same name. Then Biblical extracts from both Testaments. In Revelation 21:10 John sees New Jerusalem descend from heaven onto a mountain and Ezekiel descibes a mountain where heaven and earth meet (40:2, 28:14)
Same old luciferian-gnostic path to enlightenment through opposites. There's even a sun/moon pair. This time the path is hermetic and alchemical. But the structure is as old as the occult.
The spray of symbols has two parts. The first is just squid ink. The Band first used the term when looking at how Jordan Peterson vomits incoherent chains of symbols and references to confuse his audience. The tactic depends on being able spam out enough deep sounding things that no one can source-check you. If the audience believes you communicate in good faith, they will assume you are extraordinarily knowledgable and really have profound knowledge to communicate. This falls apart under scrutiny but the occult always does - it relies on people believing what they want to hear and being too lazy to look deeper.
The second part deserves its own red label.
3. The Churn of Symbols - how the same spray of symbols keeps getting repackaged and reused under slightly different labels. This is the modern occult in a nutshell. Consider Satanic a-hole Aleister Crowley. Obviously there is more to the modern occult than this turd, but he makes a good example because he is well-known and doesn't need backstory. At one point, Crowley belonged to the Order of the Golden Dawn - a mainly Hermetic occult group with some other crap mixed in. He split with the group over what seems to be lifestyle/morality issues before moving into demonology and magic and founding his own occult system. On the surface it looks like two "movements" but in reality Crowley and the Golden Dawn continued to believe a lot of the same things.
Émile Bayard Summoning the Beloved Dead, from Paul Christian's ‘Histoire de la magie’, Paris, 1870. The picture supposedly represents the Rites of Isis, a Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn ritual.
Like Egypt as a mystical source. The Golden Dawn drew heavily on the same Hermetic thought as Kircher and the late Roman occultists. Their rituals and magic system incorporated the resurrection of Osiris and the Book of the Dead. Their most powerful magic was the assumption of Egyptian God Forms - when "the plasiticity of the energetic body" awakens "the forces of the Egyptian Deities". So there's that.
Likely Lola Zaza Crowley, undated photo of Aleister and Rose Crowley's second daughter.
After Crowley left the Golden Dawn he went to Egypt, where he claimed to have been contacted by a messenger of Horus he called Aiwass. Crowley was the be the prophet of a new age. The result was his Book of the Law and his first declaration of his most famous message: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".
"Aiwass" first contacted Crowley by speaking through his first wife Rose and making an appointment to meet in person. Afterwords, the Crowleys went to the Egyptian museum, where Rose claimed to recognize Horus on the painted Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu i, number 666 in the collection
The Crowley family looks terrible, and we aren't willing to look deeper. This picture is likely Lola Zaza Crowley, Rose's second daughter, who disowned her father as an adult and distanced herself completely from this life. Her older sister Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith died at 2.
Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu i (Stele of Revealing) 680/70 BCE, late Dynasty 25/early Dynasty 26, painted plaster on wood, Egyptian Museum, Cairo
It depicts the priest Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu i and falcon-headed Re-Harakhty - a hybrid of the sun god Ra and Horus, the son and heir of Osiris. The winged solar disc is above and Nuit, goddess of night brackets the whole thing. The text includes passages from the Book of the Dead - the late form of the Egyptian funeral ritual intended to lead the deceased into eternal life. "Make for me the path to the place in which Re, Atum, Khepri, and Hathor are therein." This resurrection theme also comes in the repeated references to the deceased as "The Osiris".
Crowley claimed that it showed the three chief deities of Thelema.
Both the Golden Dawn and Crowley accepted the idea that occult knowledge from Egypt promised to bring humanity into a new age. Both based their fables on the incoherent spray of symbols coming out of the Renaissance and metastasizing in the Enlightenment. Same basic thought pattern but disagreement on the details - what other nonsense to mix in, the role of demons, etc. But one critical thing that they have in common with just about every occult movement is that they promise some kind of a new beginning.
Frontispiece from Oswald Croll's Basilica chymica..., Frankfurt, 1609
Renaissance occultists took up ancient lore for the same reasons as the Renaissance in general - the notion it could improve the present. Alchemy reflected the Neoplatonic and Hermetic idea that the material world was a microcosm for the heavens, so relations down here symbolized Truths from up there.
The pyramid corresponds nicely to symbols of the Trinity, so the "heaven" can be nominally Christian. Orders of angels corresponding to the elements. But the path to Truth through occult ancient knowledge us the opposite.
These claims have a short shelf life, but as one movement fails to deliver, there is always another to take up the old nonsense. And every time the old symbols are regurgitated, they come with a fresh promise that this time the lost wisdom will do... something.
Macrocosm and microcosm, engraving from Johann Daniel Mylius' Opus Medico-Chymicum..., vol. 3, Basilica Philosophica, Frankfurt: 1618.
Now it's the path of balanced opposites leading through the zodiac to the pyramid/Trinity. This is Gnosticism with a Christian mask - the opposites "resolve" in an utter transcendence beyond both of them. Even the deer-headed abomination has something to offer. The Christian doesn't seek to balance evil with good, he seeks to avoid it.
The standard history is that the Renaissance was was a short-lived transition from the Middle Ages into modern times. Turning to the ancients kick-started Progress!, but once the West got going, their work was done. A comfortable retirement to the history museums while the Enlightenment ushered in full secularism. Meanwhile, all the occult, mystical, and religious is dismissed as something modern man "outgrew". The reality is that these things may have disappeared from "history" but they didn't disappear. They just went elsewhere.
Modernity broke knowledge into "disciplines" or "domains" - each with their own rules and concerns. There was no choice - as our collective knowledge base grew, it had to be categorized to be manageable. But this required critical judgement, and modern disciplines developed according to the ideologies and interests of authorized historians. The writers of "history" as an academic field.
As pointed out in the last post, this greatly reduces the frame of reference for historical artifacts. Bluntly, not being of interest to professional historians is not the same as not having happened. Consider the Pyramid of Austerlitz, built by French general Auguste de Marmont's Netherlands-based army in 1804 and renamed to commemorate Napoleon's victory a year later.
The Pyramid of Austerlitz, 1804, stone obelisk, 1894, Woudenberg, Netherlands
The basic history is that it was inspired by the Giza pyramids that Marmont saw during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. But that doesn't explain why it's a flatter step pyramid. Or why there's an obelisk on top. The layout is much closer to a sun temple. It is also curious that the pyramid and obelisk were 36 and 13 meters - important occult numbers in the globalist metric system invented during the French Revolution in 1799.
The Band is not arguing that Montmont was an occultist - no allegations pop up in a quick search. But the purported story doesn't really explain what this monument looks the way it does. Or even why the effort would be expended on it - a huge sun temple type pyramid with occult dimensions as a make-work project in wartime?
The last post looked at Athanasius Kircher as a late example of Renaissance occult ideas. The debunking of the Corpus Hermeticum during his lifetime makes his a good bookend for that period of intellectual history, if we stick to the official story. But the same year Casuabon blew up Hermes, a manifesto appears repackaging the same old ideas in an attractive new package - Rosicrucianism or the Order of the Rosy Cross in English.
Fama fraternitatis Roseae Crucis oder Die Bruderschaft des Ordens der Rosenkreuzer, Kassel, 1614
The first of three anonymous tracts that told of the likely fictitious Christian Rosenkreutz, a medieval alchemist and occultist. It was the same old mixture of hermetic and gnostic ancient wisdom blather but with a twist - the secret learned society as the purveyors of the occult wisdom. The Rosicrucian pitch was that manifestos referred to a group that had been around for centuries - this was just them going public.
It makes it hard to date them. It is most likely that this Rosicrucianism was a direct outgrowth of occult groups in the Renaissance. The "cross" can be confusing, but it is not a Christian symbol. It represents the coming together of occult opposites as a path to human enlightenment.
Tree of Pansophia, 1604, from the Rosicrucian Speculum Sophicum Rhodostauroticum, by the pseudonymous Theophilus Schweighardt Constantiens, 1618
The same old human microcosm / cosmic macrocosm link, through the gnostic balance of alchemical elements. The path of balance leads to a transcendent "unity" - a reference to the Old Testament God as an Egyptian winged solar disc. By now, the churn of symbols should be clear. But the general meaning never really changes - ancient human knowledge through fake balance leading to Truth. And presumably power, but the power occult societies always seem to be of the political, conspiratorial type.
Occult societies were like a throwback to the old mystery cults, but with a twist. These movements preach the Renaissance gospel of ancient wisdom as the way to social renewal, not the consistent observance of an established deity. This gives them a short shelf life, but once one set of fake promises proves false, the symbols can just churn on into a new form.
The Seven Governors or Planets from Jakob Böhme's Theosophische Wercke, 1618 and reprinted countless times.
Böhme applied the Gnostic-Hermetic-alchemical occult to Protestant Christianity into a weird mystical spin of his own. This picture has balanced "opposites", zodiac, alchemical unity, crosses, winged solar pyramid gods - another churn of the spray.
See how hard it is to classify this nonsense?
Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens Secretioris naturae secretorum scrutinium chymicum, Frankfurt: Johann Philipp Andreae for Georg Heinrich Oehrling, 1687
A lavish collection of Hermetic alchemical occult images by a German alchemist, physician and a counsellor to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II Habsburg at Prague. The first edition first came out in 1617.
It's typical of Hermetic or 'Egyptian' interpretations of myths as containing hidden occult meanings. Here, the legend of Atalanta is told in alchemical terms with Atalanta as Mercury, her suitor Hippomenes is Sulphur, and the Golden Apples that lets him catch her as Salt - the principle of balance that brings synthesis. The emblems are loaded with references to occult sources.
Like this one, where the triangle/pyramid has morphed from a vague symbol of the Trinity to the unity of human opposites - male and female - in a higher place. Note how the pointers look like compasses.
It should come as no surprise that this union of opposites elevates the hermaphrodite to a higher state. This emblem retells the mythical romance between Mars and Venus - war and love - as Mercury and Venus - Hermes and love.
Love. It doesn't mean affection in the Hermetic alchemical occult. Love is the balance that brings opposites into synthesis - physical and metaphysical. This is really important for understanding occult symbols.
Thelema is Crowley's fake religion based on his famous "law". This churn of the spray is part of the Hermetic family tree, with its own magickal twists.
The second part is less well-known. The "love" here is the breaking of distinctions and synthesizing of "opposites" of the alchemical occult. Explicitly making will the driving force is the luciferian part.
Elphias Levi's famous Baphomet, reprinted in Stanislas de Guaita's Le Serpent de la Genèse: Le Temple de Satan, Paris, 1891
Path to enlightenment through balancing opposites by will. Sun and moon, male and female, heaven and earth with the Hermetic caudecus - what the luciferians and satanists add to the churn is human and animal. Specifically the goat, an animal with a long symbolic history connecting it to carnality and lust, as opposed to reason and spirit. Not sure about the Turkish pants.
Driving opposites into monstrosities by forcing desire onto nature is a Satanic inversion at the basis of all this occult nonsense.
The idea of the Rosicrucians as a secret esoteric society had a real impact on Europe. The formation of the famous English Royal Society was inspired by the Rosicrucians, and Michael Maier of the Atalanta fugiens was an influence on Isaac Newton's own alchemical ideas. And then there were the Masons.
We've already done some occult posts on Freemasonry - looking mainly at the compass as a symbol of secret knowledge of the universe. We decided that the basic perspective of the organization was luciferian in that it promoted human knowledge and will as a path to metaphysical truth. Looking back on the images now, it is easy to see them churning the spray - Böhme even turns up as a comparison. The obelisk was part of the spray.
Masonic engraving commissioned by B.R. Newman and painted in 1798 by J. Biggen
Masonic symbols are another churn of the spray with a bunch of their own stuff added. Like the pillars in front of the Temple of Solomon cast by the imaginary founder of "the craft" - the unfortunately named Hiram Abiff. Like the Rosicrucians, Freemasonry is founded relatively late, but claims to possess secrets from Biblical times. Hermetic orders like to pretend that they are improbably old in order to claim to have been the secret source of the ideas they were actually ripping off.
Gnostic-alchemical path of balance, sun and moon, sunburst unity / pyramid with all-seeing eye... The eye and pyramid is easily taken for the Trinity and Providence, but the actual history is alchemical and Hermetic.
The occult-esoteric-secret society world of the late 18th century is impossibly complicated. This article looks at William Blake's connection to all this, but is most interesting for the deep dive into the mess of Masonry, "illuminated" Masonry, Swedenborgianisn, Theosophy, Hermeticism, alchemy, Kaballah, sexual magic, assorted strains of Christian, Jewish, and pagan mysticism, and revolutionary politics. If you are interested in this stuff, it is a fascinating deep dive. If not, the point for our purposes is that there is no way to separate these into distinct beliefs or schools of thought. Groups would form, split, change, and/or merge depending on the ideas and whims of different "leaders". This makes it impossible to just say 'Masons believed X' or 'Theosophy and Hermeticism are different for Y reasons'. What matters is that all of these nonsense peddlers were drawing on a common set of ideas that the Band calls Gnostic-Luciferian and/or Satanic. And the moronic "unity of all religions".
There are few places where stupidity and vanity have come together as persistently as in the "unity of all religions". To be clear, this is not the idea that people of different religions get along. No, this is the long-running idiocy that any source of "wisdom" offers insight into the same "deeper" metaphysical truths.
Basically no philosophy or religion gets God right, but they all are partly correct. They may directly contradict, but that's where the arrogance comes in - this time, the charlatan with the paltry set of symbols that have been recombinated for centuries knows what they really mean! The picture captures the level of self-idolatrous vanity needed to claim you better understand the metaphysical claims of different religious traditions than they do. It's occult wisdom 101.
Let's do an alchemical transformation:
Unity through personal desire and will
[Alchemical] love though personal will
Love is the law. Love under will.
See how it works?
Note how the unity of all religions types can never explain why their dogmas are more credible than they ones they claim to replace. There is never a coherent ontological or theological argument, or any reason why their fake "ancient sages" should be taken seriously at all. When you look at how flimsy and inconsequential unitarian "doctrines" actually are, it becomes impossible not to see charlatans exploiting idiots.
Pierre Lambert de Lintot, Masonic copperplate engraving, published in London in 1789.
This becomes occult when it involves secret knowledge. And these groups loved secrets. Despite their Enlightenment views, the secret knowledge they trafficked in was the same hermetic drivel as Kircher and the Renaissance occultists from the last post.
Lambert came out of that muddle of Enlightenment occult societies. A talented engraver and Jacobin that started a Masonic lodge of French Illuminés and combined occult themes into arcane diagrams prized by European Masons.
The "debunking" of the Corpus Hermeticum was resolved in the most gamma way possible - the book itself may be a late antique forgery, but it's based on real ancient sources! That are now lost! Hermes lives! And all the wisdom is still there - you have to dig it out from a corrupt transmission. You get to be the king of secrets. Instead of joining an ancient Hermetic mystery cult, the text is the mystery. This actually makes Hermeticism more suited to the occult - it's a hidden code like alchemical secrets or kaballah to be churned however you want.
Click for an in-depth look at the Hermetic aspects of the symbolism. We'll stick to one close-up - the second from the top in the middle. Note the central pyramid and Rosicrucian crosses. The obelisk on the left with the dove is labeled "love" and the tower with the Templar crosses says "sign of God's Will".
Love is the law. Love under will. It's balance.
The obelisk brings us back to the point of this post - the occult obelisk in modern times. Although Masonic symbolism always looks like classical realism of some kind, there are connections to Egypt in their dogmas. The big one in web searches is their involvement in installing prominent obelisks in world cities. Specifically, the Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, the Cleopatra's Needles in London and New York's Central Park, and the towering new Washington Monument dedicated to the first president and prominent Freemason in DC were all Masonic projects.
Thomas Crane and Ellen Houghton, page 4 illustration of Felix Leigh's London Town, London/New York: Marcus Ward & Co., 1883.
Four children and a dog stand on Waterloo Bridge, looking south along the River Thames towards the Palace of Westminster. Cleopatra's Needle can be seen to the left. Imperial Victorian globalism was in full swing - what better sign than the old Roman symbol of the center of civilization. Only now several cities have them.
The Egyptian connection runs deeper than generic occult Hermetic hieroglyphic wisdom. According to Masonic legend, one of their key figures, Hiram Abiff, is Osiris reborn. This takes the supposed architect - or mason - of the Temple of Solomon in the Old Testament and ties him into the Egyptian resurrection myth. The source material is bare bones - the artificer sent to Solomon by Hiram, King of Tyre, to help build the Temple. In 2 Chronicles 2 he is described as multi-skilled, while 1 Kings 7 describes him as a brass artist who cast the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, and other works. From this, Freemasonry made up a legendary character who knew the occult secrets of the universe and encoded them in his work before being murdered by jealous rivals.
According to the link, the historical records indicate this story appears around 1725 with the invention of the Third Degree.
The Egyptian Room in the Masonic Temple of Philadelphia, 1873.
One of several symbolic theme rooms in this lavishly decorated temple. Masonic prints aren't heavily Egypt-themed, but Egyptian symbols and myth play a big part in their own occultic mythology
The Osiris connection derives from the Rosicrucian claim that building the Temple prefigured Christianity and that Hiram was therefore a Christ figure. Osiris goes all in on the unity of all religions by anchoring it in the occult source of the spray. Rosicrucians connected Hiram to the Son of God, Light of the World and to the resurrection of Osiris as the light of the sun. It's incoherent historically, but that's why we call it a churn. The idea is that all these symbols of eternal life point beyond themselves to... wait for it... a higher truth - resurrection into the Grand Lodge above, where "the Great Architect rules and reigns forever".
Plate made by Osiris Shrine Temple in Wheeling, West Virginia for the Imperial Council Session in New Orleans, 1910
The Shriners were founded in 1870 as a fraternal society for Masons who had achieved the level of master. The basic symbolism carries over. How does one reconcile Osiris Temple as a name, even comically, with a Christian world view? Commitment to the first reveals at best a poor understanding of the second. They are literally contradictory.
Higher truths above the unity of all beliefs, it is by definition not a Christian notion of God. Denying the divinity of Jesus is a declaration that your supreme being is diametrically opposed to the core foundation of Christian truth. Metaphysical knowledge is based in faith, and you can't hold faith in contradictory things. Masonry may do some good in the world, but on the spiritual level, faith in the path to the Great Architect or to the Christian God are mutually exclusive. They pathways contradict each other. You have to choose.
The unity of all religions, like the churn of symbols it draws from, is fundamentally oppositional to Christianity - or any other religious system. But it is catnip for retards. Consider:
Andrei Rublev, Holy Trinity or The Hospitality of Abraham, around 1400, tempera on wood, Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery
The churn of symbols is based on choosing general similarities against doctrinal truth claims on your own authority - you decide that the Osiris, Jesus, and Hiram stories resemble each other so they must be the same thing.
Like this common IQ test. The "history" is absolutely nonsensical fan fiction and the "argument" no more than "they sort of look like each other...". As if symbols were some sort of 19th century lungfish instead of arbitrary choices for specific reasons.
Osiris between the Eyes of Horus and two fetishes - stuffed animal skins tied to a phallic lotus pole, from the Tomb of Sennedjem, 13th century BC
But the ankh in ancient Egypt was a generic symbol of divinity. Osiris sometimes had them, but so did any divine entity. Osiris' personal symbols were the crook and flail - legacies of the agrarian origins of his cult. Of course, the crook looks a bit like a cross and an ankh. And the flail has has two straight bars. And the fetishes have a vertical shaft. And they resemble penises... Conversely, all shepherds and threshers are really priests of Osiris.
A moment of thought makes it obvious what an ignorant and imaginary matching game this is. But a moment might as well be an eternity for the sort of idiot solipsist drawn to this sort of "insight".
Symbols have lives, but these are based on ideas. The ankh and cross represent opposing notions of human relations to the divine - whatever they look like, the meanings - that is, how they are used and what they stand for - conflict. Many of the vast range of Christian symbols don't resemble each other at all, but all point back to the same set of beliefs. Why? Because their users chose them.
Unity of all religions a-holes ignore fundamental defining differences in theological depth, historical evidence, nature of source material, etc. matters because they "see a similarity". They claim to adjudicate theological legitimacy without offering anything beyond "ancient sages" nothing rising to even the most basic level of argument. Sort of like Mercury had a snake on his wand, so the serpent in Eden had valuable wisdom. If you can't see the Satanic, self-deifying, do what thou wilt nature of this perspective, it may be time to ask what can you know and how can you know it.
Masons were into Egyptomania from the start. There were numerous prominent Masons among Napoleon's commanders, advisors, and scholars on his Egypt invasion - this may be where Marmont got his obelisk pyramid idea. Another Masonic explorer claimed he found a Masonic temple in Thebes with paintings of Osiris in a Masonic apron being initiated into Freemasonry. This was obviously a fake claim, but it shows how deeply they wanted that Egyptian connection.
Then there are the prominent obelisks.
Like Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park.
The link provides good view of how involved Freemasons were in the whole process of procuring the obelisk. The erection was a big deal too - the 50,000 who attended heard an hour-long speech from the Grand Master then 10,000 Masons singing "a battery of three times three".
The Grand Master's address is pure occult truth in the unity of all religions:
Or the Washington Monument, one that always turns up in searches for Masons and the occult. They were as central to the funding and building of this as they were the importation of Cleopatra's Needle. And it is filled with Masonic "relics".
The occult always comes down to belief, but symbols do have lives. This isn't a "secular" symbol at all. It isn't Christian either. It's metaphysics are the spray of Hermetic, Gnostic, Rosicrucian self-deification that goes back to Egyptian solar temples. Ultimately it's luciferian. What that "means" depends on what you believe.
Vinnie Ream Hoxie, Proposal for the completion of the Washington Monument, 1876-78
We do know that when construction stalled, the Masons proposed to top the stump with a massive statue of Washington. Is this consistent with either the classical republican values that the US was founded on? The Christian values of the American nation? Enlightenment faith in equalism? Anything in the history of the polity?
But it makes way more sense when we think of it as a specific application of a general meaning. The ascention of the exalted leader not through faith, but the mastery of occult lore. Like the pharaoh as a god, or the divine Augustus, only adapted to the world of secret societies, where the "real" kings are secret.
That is, another churn in the life of the symbol.
Vinnie Ream, between 1870 and 1880, photograph, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
Vinnie has a whiff of brimstone about her too. She was a friend and enthusuastic supporter of Albert Pike, a highly influential Mason who was deeply immersed in the occult side of the order. Hoxie was inexplicably chosen by Congress at 18 to carve a statue of Lincoln, making her the first woman and youngest sculptor so honored. It was here that she met Pike, who confered Masonic degrees on her despite having no relatives in the order.
There's a look...
Henry R. Searle, Proposed design for the completion of the Washington Monument, 1877, photograph, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
Then there was this beauty. No obvious connection between Searle and Freemasonry, but he does goes all in on the pyramid allusion and phallic symbolism. All that's missing is the Eye of Horus at the tip.
Which puts the George Washington Masonic National Memorial - a self-declared "Beacon of Light" - in perspective. It's a modified obelisk with pyramid top.
It's newer than the Washington Monument - built between 1922 and 1932 - but it is also a functioning temple as well as a memorial. And it finally managed to get the obelisk and cult statue back together. The interior speaks for itself:
As the symbol churns, it picks up new heroes. There is no evidence Washington saught to be deified. The historical record shows the opposite - that he was happy to retire to private life after his service to the nation. But this doesn't matter once something is plugged into the churn of symbols. Rewriting a real person is minor - the churners will fabricate characters completely when needed. Masonic Washington is remarkably honest compared to Hermes Trismegistus or Christian Rosenkreutz.
The "modern" perspective is that this is all allegorical. It doesn't have to meet serious historical standards because it isn't historical. It's symbolic - the same tired old unity of all religions or all "wisdoms" that titillated the Renaissance occultists, just without the magic. Technically, the word occult should apply to any secret lore, but the modern redefinition of the spray of symbols as "allegory" created a division around place of the supernatural.
Time Magazine cover, Feb. 14, 1955
Modern occultists from Masons to Satanists claim that the symbols are just "esoteric" - they don't have any real spiritual meaning. This way, it doesn't matter that the spells don't work - they're just signs of some higher truth. Jungian archetypes are an excellent example of pretending mystical hocum isn't supernatural.
Note the two entwined serpents - clearly Hermetic and not the Biblical Eden/Fall. The rest is familiar - the brute stone beneath male and female principles who join through hermetic lore into the alchemical-Gnostic third way. Love as unity under will. And what looks like the Rose Cross betwen the T and I.
That "the weekly newsmagazine" was printing this occult bullshit under the banner "EXPLORING THE SOUL" sums up their historical relationship to the beautiful, the true, or the good.
"Real" occultists believe that that esoteric higher truth has a practical supernatural dimension. Think of it as atheistic sociopathy vs. actual magic. On another way - what do you make of this:
Works Projects Administration, Dealey Plaza Obelisk, 1940, Dealey Plaza, Dallas
Dealey Plaza, the site of JFK's assassination in 1963 has an obelisk. Is this significant or anecdote? If significant, is it because of cosmic forces or human conspiricy? And is there any to determine the answer beyond faith in the unknowable?
More importantly, does it matter? Claims about the nature of God, ultimate reality, and the afterlife are by definition "supernatural". It's a false distinction intended to confuse. Squid ink. There's really only one question:
That was a long one, but we've already stretched the two-parter to three, and need to move on. Obelisks were the focus, but the pattern applies to so much occult dimwittery:
The life of symbols - how symbols lie dormant, waiting for the next in an endless parade of self-deifying charlatans to apply general associations to new specifics.
The spray of symbols - how different symbols pile up into nonsensical claims about the unity of all religions, or wisdom, or knowledge. It is hard to sort the Hermeticism from the Gnosticism from the Kabbalah from the other mysticisms, but they all point to a self-driven path to secret "true knowledge" that never amounts to anything.
The churn of symbols - how one spray replaces another, recombinating the same general ideas into new spins until distinctions become almost meaningless. The details vary between or even within groups, but the pattern never changes. Click for a fairly shameless recent version.
Call it the spray of charlatans.
Abstract Expressionist painter Barnett Newman of all people has perhaps the best take on this.
Barnett Newman, Broken Obelisk, 1963-1967, Cor-Ten steel, Rothko Chapel, Houston
One of four versions of the sculpture.
And the University of Washington version.
The old rusted metal is a nice metaphor for the substance behind the "Egyptian mysteries" symbolized by obelisk and pyramid.
But it's even more fitting. These were originally solar-divine symbols - pointing upward phallically towards occult self-divinization. Then charlatan after charlatan claimed them as signs of their own occult enlightenment. Newman lifts the veil and shows where they really point - at each other. The spray, the churn, the unities of all religions - they're all recursive. They just lead back on themselves and endlessly recycle the same nonsense.
A slow drain for solipsists and secret kings, endlessly circling the bowl. That's enough for obelisks, but rember the larger pattern. Avoid the spray.
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